Is 330W power supply enough?

[rmcohen]

Hi guys,

I'm intersted in purchasing the Antec Performance Plus Plus660 that comes with a 330W power supply. I'm just concerned that 330W is rather anemic. I would appreciate some feedback on the this amount of wattage for the following non-overclocked system:

Athlon XP 2000+
Abit NV7-133R MB
2 x WD Special Edition 80GB 7200RPM with 8MB buffer
2 x Crucial 256MB
Gainward GeForce 4 Ti4200 with 128MB
Plextor PlexCombo drive
floppy drive

Thanks for reading,
Robert

 

[yakko]

For what you have listed it is fine. The question of it being enough comes in when you tells how many and what size fans you have.

 

[ThisIsMatt]

You'll be fine. Having a decent power supply is good, but I think a lot of people here go way overboard. Having some extra headroom is good, though, but no need to overkill. That PSU is a pretty high quality one if I'm not mistaken -- I think a lot of people may have been burned by using no-name 300/350/400W PSU's to the point where they'll tell you only a 400+W PSU will do...not so.

A friend of mine is running a very similar setup to your's, although with a 4400ti and an additional dvd drive on a 300W enermax.

I was running:
asus a7v133
Tbird 1.4
2x256MB
40gig 7200
80gig 5400
nic
floppy
sblive+5.1
modem
cdrom
cdrw
dvd
2 case fans

all on a 235W sparkle PSU (they make solid PSU's). I didn't want to push it, though, and have since gone to a 350W Sparkle and am using an internal zip drive now as well.

Another friend had:
Abit AT7
XP1900+
4 x 40gig 7200 striped
cdrw
dvd

all on a 250W dell psu that only put out 150W 5v+3.3v combined.


So, I think you'll be fine

 

[rmcohen]

Thanks for the quick feedback guys.

Yakko, my fan power requirements are also low. I will have 4 fans. All will be Panaflo 80 mm L1a's (or at least the BMG Micro version). I will have 2 at the front of the case, 1 at the rear of the case and 1 on the heatsink.

 

[bozo1]

It will be fine. Fans in most cases suck less than 5 watts each which is negligible in the scheme of things.

 

[Adul]

you'll be fine then.

 

[mechBgon]

The TP330 does supply just as much 3.3V power as the PP412X does: 28 amps. It actually supplies 8 amps more on 3.3V than their 350W PP352X does. So if you're going to get a PSU, that looks like a good one all right.

 

[chillysalsa]

Sounds like You'll be fine. I'm running even more stuff with a 300W.

The AMD website has a whitepaper on calculating the right PSU for your system, look under recomended power supplies.

 

[Kindjal]

You can take a look at my T-Bird Rig and see that I have everything running fine with the TP 330W PS.

I have five 80mm case fans (hated to see all those spots look empty ) plus all the other usual PC hardware and she purrs right along.

I see a lot of talk about these huge power supplies but I don't plan on arc welding with my PS.

 

[OracleMan]

I'm using Antec 300 watts PS with the following specs:

4 80mm fans, 2 small fans fit in pci slot, cd-rw, dvd, seagate scsi160 10K rpm hd, maxtor 7200rpm hd,
alpha 8045 HS w/ 80mm fan, scsi adapter, matrox RT2500, ATI all-in-wonder.

It runs fine with 300 watts. 330 watts should be fine.

 

[BigEdMuustaffa]

Isn't it Watts = amps x volts.......examples:


So a Panaflo 80mm fan like the one i have is .1A and 12 volts....so wouldn't that make the fan 1.2 watts?


on the 12 volt rail that is. A maxtor 7200 rpm 40 gig HD draws 3/4 amp on the 12 and 1/2 amp on the 5 so that's only

8watts and 2.5 watts no? So when you add all your parts up.... that will tell you what you need or don't need.

 

[paralazarguer]

For an extremely detailed breakdown of how a power supply works and how to calcluate your needs click here